Ethereum (ETH) and XRP Price Gains Dwarfed Bitcoin Rally, Which Cryptos beat BTC in 2020?

No one can dispute the incredible year that Bitcoin has had but despite the BTC price gaining over 150% in 2020 the original crypto’s gains have been dwarfed by the price increases of other altcoins—including Ethereum (ETH) and Ripple’s XRP token.

So which other cryptocurrency’s price gains have outperformed Bitcoin in 2020 and why?

The Bitcoin price has more than doubled since the beginning of the year driven by a new wave of institutional investment confidence in the crypto’s ability to hedge against coming inflation, and numerous financial leaders proclaiming BTC to be a new form of digital gold.

As the Bitcoin price rallied higher last week and continues to test the $20,000 BTC price resistance, public interest has surged and many crypto traders now expecting a further boost to the altcoins that have been outperforming Bitcoin all year—namely XRP and Ethereum, as well as a host of other cryptos.

Ethereum and DeFi Price Gains

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) has been a hot topic in 2020 and the interest in this sector—which aims to offer traditional financial services through blockchain technology—has seen a number of cryptocurrency prices well exceed the 150% yearly gain of Bitcoin.

The majority of DeFi projects are built on Ethereum blockchain, which has seen the ETH token price surge 300% this year—double Bitcoin. With the launch of the ETH 2.0 transition to staking underway, and the interest in DeFi continuing, many expect the ETH price to continue to surge.

Kosala Hemachandra, the CEO of MyEtherWallet said:

“The recent rally in Ethereum is associated with multiple factors […] benefiting from the overall crypto rally, and the first phase of Ethereum 2.0. […] This is just the initial phase (phase 0) of the Ethereum 2.0 roll-out, building the foundation for Ethereum 2.0’s success. I expect that Ethereum will continue to gain prominence in mainstream circles as we hit future Ethereum 2.0 milestones."

Another cryptocurrency and network that has found a lot of utility within the DeFi space is Chainlink. The popular price oracle is leveraged by decentralized exchanges (DEX) to link up data sources, APIs, and payment systems, and the token price of LINK has surged by 500% in 2020, leaving BTC’s price gains in the dust.

These incredible 2020 price rallies by BTC, ETH, XRP, and LINK are again made to look minor when compared to a handful of even are dwarfed by the returns recorded by a handful of more minor cryptocurrencies. Popular yield farming DeFi protocol, Yearn.finance, seen it YFI token price increase by a mind-blowing 2,600% in just the last year.

Ripple’s XRP Token Booming

This year has also seen rapid growth from Ripple’s native token, XRP. The cryptocurrency managed to hit a two-year high in 2020 and has rallied bullishly alongside Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).

Ripple’s XRP token has also seen a price surge of around 165% this year, with most of its price gains coming over the course of the last month.

The XRP price seems to be surging further as the Flare Network, which is a smart contract utility fork of XRP, will be dropping more than 45 billion of its native Spark token on December 12. Anyone owning Ripple (XRP) tokens and participating in the airdrop up to this point will be able to receive Spark tokens on a 1:1 ratio.

Ripple’s token is the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization and the XRP price seems to be surging further as the Flare Network—which is a smart contract utility fork of XRP—will be dropping more than 45 billion of its native Spark token on December 12. Anyone owning Ripple (XRP) tokens and participating in the airdrop up to this point will be able to receive Spark tokens on a 1:1 ratio.

Along with XRP, two other popular cryptocurrencies—Cardano (ADA) and Stellar Lumens (XLM) which has seen price surges of 300% and 200% in 2020.

As 2020 draws to a close, Bloomberg analysts recently concluded that there seems to be little to stop Bitcoin’s upward trajectory, particularly following its correction and a period of disdain. The analysts predict that BTC will move sideways for a few months but that the BTC price outlook for 2021 should gain to about $40,000 indicating that this bull run will not be stopping anytime soon. As BTC rises both in value and in public awareness, investors expect to continue to see gains in top ten cryptos like XRP and ETH as well as within the booming DeFi sector.